


I Who Dream

by jamaillith



Category: Marvel 1602, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 10:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1896009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamaillith/pseuds/jamaillith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by the Valentine's Day prompt at redshippers. In another life, in another universe, she finds him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Who Dream

When she dreams, she is not John Grey. 

John Grey goes about in doublet and breeches; he is quiet, and clever, and loves only God. In her dreams, she is in flowing skirts that lap at her ankles like water, or else nothing at all. She shouts and sings and she and Scotius meet under skyfuls of stars and declare their love, over and over. 

She is not John Grey. 

Sometimes, like this time, she is not even Jean.

This time, she has gone to bed early, before Vespers, a headache pounding behind her eyes. It is not the first headache she has had, nor the worst of them, but it is enough to have her stomach turning and Roberto escorting her to her room with a hand beneath her elbow. 

She undresses and slips naked between the sheets, her bare skin stippled by the chill of the fabric. It is February and it is cold, but she doesn’t mind it. It is a kind of relief, after a day in tight breeches and binding cloth, to feel nothing but cold from her collar to her toes. 

The pain in her head has the room swirling about her, and she squeezes her eyes shut against it and darkness comes up to welcome her almost immediately, as if it as been waiting. 

 

She is flying, at first. Flying over a great dark ocean, on wings of shadow. There is a flame burning in the centre of her chest. She can feel it pressing upon her heart, making it beat hard and fast, as if a great excitement is building somewhere within her. She laughs as she flies, and throws her head back and feels her long hair trail behind her like smoke. 

Then, there is a voice ( _who are you?_ ) intruding upon her flight, speaking in her mind or her heart, she isn’t sure. 

_Who are you?_

Her wings falter. She twists mid-air as if to throw the voice off but she cannot, it is within her, grasping at her with fingers of awareness. For a moment she is a child again, skirt caught on a bramble and her father with his warm grip on her arm helping her pull free, if only she can pull free-

‘Who are you?’

It is as if she has been caught in a dance, whirling across the floor only to have a hand reach out and catch her by the wrist, so suddenly is she pulled into him. 

He is in a forest. Snow on the ground, thick against the trunks of great black pines that reach up as if yearning to brush against the cold white face of the moon. The air is icy and heavy with silence, save for his breathing, which sends hoary plumes into the night. 

‘Who are you?’ He says, again. 

I am, she begins, but she finds she does not know who she is. She is someone, perhaps. Somewhere.

I am lost, she says, the only thing she can be sure of. 

‘You’re in my dream,’ he says, as if that answers the question. 

This is my dream, she replies. And suddenly she is standing in front of him. A bird calls somewhere in the forest, high and lonely. She stands in the snow but doesn’t feel it; she doesn’t feel anything, except a passing sense of strangeness. 

He looks up at her with blue, blue eyes. He is dressed only in rough trousers of a handmade sort, and his body is dark with hair. There are bands of metal around his wrists, flush to the skin so she wonders how he takes them off. There is a deer carcass at his feet; he appears to be in the act of skinning it.

‘I don’t know you,’ he says. His voice seems to echo but doesn’t.

‘I don’t know you, either,’ she replies, although she does. She has seen his face before. Or she will see it again. She doesn’t know which. Time seems to stretch and thin about her, like a ribbon on her hips.

‘How am I dreaming about you, then?’ 

‘I don’t know.’ An idea comes to her; a name. This, a person within her decides, might be a test. ‘Are you... are you Javier?’ 

He frowns, confused. ‘Who?’ 

‘Oh,’ she says. 

He stands and the deer carcass fades away. She glances about them and realises that she can only see the first line of trees; everything beyond them is lost in shadow. It is as if they are standing in a pool of candlelight, except there are no candles, only the moon. 

He walks towards her, all the while looking at her as if she is some marvel, some wonder. 

‘This is a dream,’ he says, as if he is trying to confirm it to himself. He reaches up and touches his hand to her cheek, gently, softly, and she feels it, she feels it all the way to the soles of her feet. 

Oh, a part of her thinks, to be touched like this, to be touched at all, and remembers stolen kisses in the corners of dark inns, a fleeting smile hidden behind ruby-red glass.

‘Summer’s gone, darling,’ he says, a whisper, but she doesn’t hear him. 

‘This is a dream,’ she says, lifting her hand to cover his. He takes the cue and steps forward, and presses his mouth to hers in a hungry kiss. 

He tastes of the world, of spices and salt and blood and things she’s never so much as seen, let alone eaten. The wind passes through the trees around them and it sounds like the creaking of a ship, somewhere far off.

She pushes her hand into his hair, deepening the embrace, and he groans against her mouth, his hand sliding around her waist, which is bare, of course, but she discovers she doesn’t mind. Her breasts press against him as he pushes himself to her and it is her turn to moan. The forest shifts, shadows sliding grey on white; the moon waxes and wanes in the starless sky, marking months that fly by in the second it takes for his palm to glide over her back. 

Finally he pulls away, breathing hard. She can feel his heart racing. His breath is hot on her face. She can feel only him. 

‘You’re not real,’ he murmurs, a familiar loneliness in his eyes. A flicker of being; for a second she is doubled, looking at herself looking at him looking at herself. Then she is back in his arms. 

‘I am real,’ she replies. ‘I am-’ and her mind says Jean Grey but her mouth says something different, something she cannot hear, a single word that tastes like ashes on her tongue. 

He nods. ‘Logan,’ he replies, and kisses her again, deeply, and she wraps her arms about his neck and knows how his heart aches with the love of it, for her heart is aching too and somewhere she hears a bell chiming, and footsteps that sound like someone knocking at a door, only that is absurd because there are no bells nor doors in the forest.

‘I have to go,’ he says against her lips, his heart against her heart. 

‘So do I.’ 

‘Then go,’ he whispers. ‘Go!’

( _john?_ )

‘No, I-’

_John?_

‘I-’

 

Light breaks across her face and her eyes fly open and for an instant she is sure- sure to the core of her being- that she sees wood above her head and tastes salt on her lips and iron on her wrists, but after a moment it is stone and nothing, and Hal at the door with a tray of food. 

‘John?’ He says, carefully. She nods faintly and sits up in the bed, gathering the blankets to her chest so that he may not see evidence of her womanhood. 

‘Yes,’ she says, for she is, and it will do. 

For now.


End file.
